Cellular telephone use in the United States has dramatically increased over the past few years. When cellular telephones were first introduced, they were mainly large, vehicle-installed units sold through specialty dealers and small shops specializing in the installation and activation of cellular telephones. In recent years, however, compact portable units have become commonplace and cellular service providers and other mass retailers have replaced the specialty dealers and installers as the preferred source of supply. Because these compact portable units are being sold in areas serviced by local carriers having different and sometimes conflicting activation requirements, they are typically received at the retailer's store without the information necessary for their activation. The information needed for activation is generally programmed, after purchase and authorization by the telephone carrier, into the cellular telephone in order to activate it. Typically, this information includes a telephone number or Mobile Station Identification (MSID) that is installed in the memory of the cellular telephone by the mass retailer. In most domestic systems, the MSID complies with a format designated as the MIN standard, which standard is defined in IS-136, EIA-553, and so on. In other systems, the MSID may be, for example, the international mobile station identification (IMSI) format as defined in ITU recommendation E.212. In any event, the local carrier also includes some information from the cellular telephone unit itself that identifies the particular cellular unit to the local carrier's equipment in order to effect the right service (protocol selection specific to the manufacturer of the cellular unit) and correct billing (call cost accounting).
Some cellular service providers have required that any prospective customer bring the cellular telephone unit, after purchasing it, to an authorized service center for activation. Because such a procedure is cumbersome and costly to the consumer, as well as to the provider (due to a delay in the service commencement date), other service providers have developed techniques for activating the telephone unit at the point of sale. Since mass retailers concentrate on selling the consumer a cellular telephone and, because the time of their sales personnel is most profitably spent on making as many sales to as many consumers as possible, the retailers prefer to minimize the time associated with activating each cellular telephone unit after the sale. Disadvantageously, activation of the cellular telephone unit is generally performed manually by the retailer's technician or even sales clerk, with the aid of a manual through the dial key pad of the cellular telephone.
A correct sequence of numbers and codes must be entered in order to program the cellular telephone. A small mistake can cause a failure of service, render the cellular unit inoperable or even damage it. In spite of the need for accuracy and knowledge in performing this activation process, many of the individuals charged with performing this process are either untrained or unfamiliar with the proper process. Currently, a significant percentage of the post-sale activation programming fails, causing the consumer to return to the place of purchase for reprogramming with not only unit downtime, but the inconvenience of having to return and spend time while the unit is once again programmed.
Recognizing the above mentioned deficiencies, it has been proposed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,297,191 entitled METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR REMOTELY PROGRAMMING A WIRELESS TELEPHONE SET and issued to I. Gerszberg on Mar. 22, 1994, to provide a cellular telephone with a tone signals receiver to permit remote downloading of an assigned MSID into a read-only-memory circuit. This downloading is achieved, in one embodiment, by bridging the receiver onto an unblocked wireless voice communication channel established between the subscriber's set and a service representative, to thereby permit remote entry of subscriber-specific programming and wireless service authorization data into the subscriber's telephone set, as by a service representative or an automated activation computer. While this technique desirably relieves the sales representative of the task of programming the cellular telephone unit, it does involve the provision of a sufficient number of unblocked voice communication channels to accommodate the expected volume of new subscribers.
Accordingly, there exists a need for a method of programming wireless telephone sets in a manner that quickly, reliably, and cost effectively provides telephone service to new or existing customers.